At Worlds End  A Hands-On Look at End of Nations

By
now most of you are at least
somewhat familiar with the basic
concept behind Trion Worlds’ upcoming End
of Nations

By
now most of you are at least
somewhat familiar with the basic
concept behind Trion Worlds’ upcoming End
of Nations.
Developed by Petroglyph, End
of Nations combines key
gameplay elements
from MMOs and the RTS genre to create an interesting new style of
gameplay. If you’re thinking something along the lines of
DotA here, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Rather, EoN
takes the idea of persistent characters that you can customize as you
progress and marries it with a small army of units under your command.

When you first log into the
game you’ll find yourself in the War Room.
This is where you’ll be able to see and quickly access things
like your friends list and guild members, as well details on any new
missions or game updates. Think of this almost like an interactive game
launcher, only instead of a basic client patcher status bar and fancy
graphics display, the War Room is more like a gateway into the
various key aspects of the game.

Senior Producer Chris Lena also
pointed out that the War Room will
allow you to keep track of the status of the PvP metagame. In End
of
Nations players will be able to
join one of the two main factions and
fight over territory control. Controlling territory will give you
various benefits or rewards such as currency or different buffs for
your units.

The PvP metagame is divided
into seasons which can last somewhere
around 2 or 3 months. At that point not only does the struggle for
territory control begin anew, but Chris also pointed out that
you’ll even be given the option to change factions as well.
After being locked into day one faction decisions in MMOGs I was
particularly glad to hear that EoN won’t be the type of game
that forces you to abandon all of your progression and start fresh
simply for wanting to play on the same side as your friends. That also
opens up tons of potential for keeping factions balanced within the
game over a longer period.

Chris was also quick to note
that, while it may have been the core
focus of the PAX demo, there’s a lot more to End
of Nations
than the PvP experience. As we were shown earlier this year at E3, the
game also has plenty of intrieging, intense PvE missions that you can
go out an experience in persistent world zones or even in personal
instances, complete with epic boss battles.

It’s in those PvE
missions
that you’ll be able to
level up your Commander Class which comes in one of three distinct
flavors: Tank, Strike and Artillery. You’ll also be able to
earn new abilities for your commander to use on the battlefield through
the various types of PvE missions, and as you progress you’ll
have access to unique tech trees for each class that will help your
further define exactly which type of commander you want to play.

From the War Room
you’ll also be able to access your
persistent Headquarters. From here you’ll be able to build
structures that will grant you different abilities on the
battlefield such as super weapons. You’ll also be able to
take care of any crafting tasks within your headquarters such as
creating new ammunition or new units. From what we were shown these are
fairly expansive areas, consisting of multiple structures laid out
almost like a
small-scale military base.

A key structure
you’ll have access to in your headquarters is
the Armory which is where you house your current unit collection.
Among
other things you’ll be able to customize both the primary and
secondary colors for your units here. According Chris, you’ll
be
able to customize the look of your units at any time, though certain
colors and decals will be reserved for players to earn as rewards.

From your headquarters
you’ll be able to select your load-out
for a given map. Each map and unit under your command has a value
attached, so you’ll need to select which units you want to
use but their combined value can’t exceed the value limit for
that particular map. This seems like a clever solution to an age-old
issue of balancing the relative power that each player can bring to the
PvP table while still allowing for a certain amount of flexibility in
terms of which specific units you’d prefer to run with on
each map.

Heading out from the
headquarters I was able to dive directly into the
PvP map type they had available on the show floor. The specific map
they had running was a capture point map in which both sides aim to
take control of various parts of the map which helps them accumulate
victory points for their side, with the first team reaching 2100 points
winning the match.

While much
of the action seemed
to take place at the center of the map,
there were also smaller control points at each corner of the map which
proved to be much easier to flip. In fact, in my second match I helped
my team go from the brink of defeat to a surprise victory simply by
flipping the control points that had been left unattended by the red
team who were all focused on the central map point for much of the
match.

Mind you, only some of the key
map locations awarded victory points for
the side that owns them. Some instead gave access to upgradable
super weapons, while others would award you PvP resources which you
could
then spend at a special vendor. All told, this adds a layer of tactical
depth to how your side wants to approach the map – you can go
straight for the victory points, however, you may instead
want to first focus on building up the relative power of your team to
help you clear out enemy units faster.

Much like in RTS gameplay,
you’ll also be able to divide your
available units into different control groups. So rather than going
headlong into battle with your full force, you can also opt to split
your units to cover more areas on the map. Defeated units can also be
brought back into the fight relatively quickly, though during my demo
time I was only able to bring one unit back at a time which would put
that ability on cooldown.

The control scheme did take
a
little getting used to, as the current UI
setup neatly splits your hotbars into two groups. On the left
you’ll have access to each of your commander’s more
RPG-like skills, while the buttons on the right are used to control the
units under your command. By the end of my first match though, I felt
fairly comfortable with the controls and had a blast seeing what kind
of destruction I could cause with my different abilities.

Overall, I found my hands-on
time with End of Nations
to be one of the
standout moments of the event. Like Trion Worlds’ other
upcoming title at the show, Rift:
Planes of Telara, EoN was one
of the only titles I made
a point of going back to play a second time. It’s not only
one of the more visually stunning titles I saw at the show, but the
gameplay I was able to experience offered a perfect blend of RTS
tactics and RPG skill usage. It was a total blast to play, and
I’m looking forward to seeing more of End
of Nations in the
coming months.